We are having a great beginning of the school year, with all of our families and children adjusting smoothly. The children have been busy making bread, picking apples, making apple sauce, building the family tree, sharing and listening to stories and getting to know their classmates. We hope to see you all at our Back to School Night and look forward to working with your child and your family this coming school year. 

Welcome Back Ginkgo Families.  This has been an exciting beginning of the school year.  We are busy finding new activities on the shelves and working with old favorites.  Our third years are wonderful hosts to our new friends.  Our first year friend are respective observers. We are studying trees, different kinds of trees and their parts.  We are discussing living and non-living and labeling items in our environment.  

Every month we study various aspects of the world around us. Our study is partly based on the seasons as this is a predictable, real, sensorial experience for children. We start with the whole and move into the parts. In Zoology we start with basic classification: this month we talk about living and non living things and then move into plants and animals. 

You probably have smelled wonderful scents in the air as you enter the Juniper classroom.  The children have enjoyed being the baker of the day, putting on aprons and hats, and working as a team gathering ingredients, measuring and pouring. Great skills are being built at the same time. Remember if you have a cooking project at home, you have great assistants.

The children have had a great start to the year. They're receiving individual lessons, enjoying small group activities, and loving getting to know all the new faces. They've been working hard at learning everyone's names through games and songs and are continuing to learn how to introduce themselves and meet someone new. Overall, there's a pervasive feeling of busy excitement and joyful concentration. 

Over the past two weeks, Magnolia has been learning about living and non-living objects.  We have been observing our environment with a keen eye distinguishing between the two categories. We have also learned the different types of trees on campus. After learning about the different parts of a tree and geometric shapes, we constructed our own tree out of homemade clay. The children used various geometric shapes to construct the trunk, leaves, and even an owl! 

The Mulberry children are back adjusting to new routines and friends. Our motto for the year is "Help me to do it myself". The children have been learning set up their lunch and feed themselves. They have been helping to  pull up and down their pants and put on their own shoes.  We are adding more gardens for the toddlers in our yard. The children have been helping to shovel dirt into buckets and empty it into a wheelbarrow.